Software update: MKVToolnix 75.0.0

Moritz Bunkus has released version 75 of MKVToolNix. This open source program allows viewing, editing and converting matroska files. Sound tracks and subtitles can be added, removed or set as default. MKVToolNix is ​​a collection of separate commandline tools, but a graphical user interface is also included. Downloads are available for Windows, macOS and various Linux distributions. The following changes and improvements have been made in this release:

New features and enhancements

• mkvmerge: MP4 reader: mkvmerge will now read Timed Text (FourCC tx3g) subtitle tracks & convert them on the fly to Matroska’s simple text subtitle format (S_TEXT/UTF8; text only, no styles). Implements #2208, #2242, #2613, #3000, #3243, #3418 and possibly others.

Bug fixes

• all: switched back to using boost::filesystem functions for creating directories instead of the ones introduced to work around bugs in std::filesystem. The latter didn’t work correctly with UNC paths after the switch to boost::filesystem::path in v74. Fixes #3483.
• mkvmerge: VobSub reader: mkvmerge will now probe the .idx file during VobSub identification even if the .sub file is passed as the source. Avoids mis-detection of the .sub as MPEG program streams. Fixes #3489.
• MKVToolNix GUI: the GUI could abort with an exception on startup while looking for the mkvmerge or mediainfo executables due to inaccessible folders. Fixes #3481.
• MKVToolNix GUI: preferences: when opening the preferences the first time the UI might pre-select the first entry in the list of interface languages ​​if the operating system’s language is not available for MKVToolNix. This might also happen on Linux if eg en_GB is set, even though en_US is available. Now English (en_US) will be selected instead. Fixes #3486.
• MKVToolNix GUI: multiplexer: when adding files the GUI has special handling for chapter/tags/segment info files. This is done by comparing their content to certain patterns. This recognition could be wrongly triggered if any such file was embedded in another file verbatim, eg with a chapter XML file attachment in a Matroska file. When trying to add that Matroska file, the GUI would treat it as a chapter file instead of a regular one. This content-based detection was fixed. Fixes #3487.

Other changes

• mkvpropedit, GUI’s header editor: removed support for the deprecated “minimum cache” & “maximum cache” track header elements.